Level-5 CEO on The Snack World, Lady Layton, Megaton Musashi, Inazuma Eleven Ares

Megaton Musashi

At Level-5 Vision 2016, the brand new cross-media project Megaton Musashi was announced. Famitsu asks about the direction of going with a giant robot theme.

For Hino, “giant robot” is a genre he’s been wanting to do for quite some time. Similar to Inazuma Eleven, he’s excited by genres that “currently don’t have something popular”. When Inazuma Eleven was released, it was a period when a very popular soccer game had its sales dropped to 500,000 copies. Because of that situation, Level-5 wanted to revive the mood of soccer shonen manga in the current era.

Hino was told by people around him that he should stop thinking about making a soccer game. However, he felt it would be a big opportunity, and it was the same situation as the time when Professor Layton was established. It’s a genre that isn’t flooded with many titles. There’s a feeling of how “robot things aimed for children are not the trend”, so now might be the time to do it. Hino thought to take it in a different direction from Danball Senki / Little Battlers Experience and White Knight Chronicles, making an original totally full-fledged robot title that’s not bound by the frame.

Megaton Musashi is Level-5’s fifth cross-media project. As such, the company is solidifying it with the newest gimmicks. For the tangible ones, just like the past cross-media projects, Level-5 is planning to develop anime and toys. A new attempt they’re adding is tag-teaming with the editing team of Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump. Hino says there should be more articles about Musashi in the pages of that magazine.

Famitsu brings up how while enjoying the story about robots, it seems that players raise robots and pilots, and progress through the game like that. Hino acknowledges this is how the game will go, which is a title with usual story. Its world setting can resound with men (or rather middle-aged men), but Hino wants Megaton Musashi to be also played by a broader range of people including women, so he didn’t really want to make it action or fighting-only.

In Megaton Musashi, Level-5 is attempting to create the same story, but depicting them from different points of view in various forms (game, anime, etc.). In the anime, Yamato is the protagonist, but Hino talks about possibly having the game offer points-of-view for other characters. The appearance should apparently be close to Little Battlers Experience on 3DS. For the cross-media gimmick this time, you’ll be looking at the same story from different perspectives in game, anime etc. If you watch the anime together with the game, you’ll be able to understand things like knowing the truth from the beginning, and also what happens behind the currently ongoing story.

According to Hino, Megaton Musashi will be an RPG with familiar aspects. However, he’s also thinking of including some online features. Details are a secret for the time being.

Regarding platforms, Hino says that systems are under consideration, though he’s thinking of putting it on 3DS. Additionally, since the game has a giant robot theme and the anime is also being produced with an over-the-top feeling, they’re considering the likes of high-spec home consoles which could properly make such content enjoyable. After all, since a 60-meter tall giant robot will be appearing, Hino wants to show it on a giant screen. During Level-5 Vision, by showing the game on a big screen, it had a tremendous amount of presence.

In Megaton Musashi, Level-5 is fixating a lot on the cool factor of the robot, and the “cool actions inside the cockpit” like screaming the name of a technique and then pushing the lever. In how robots are normally approached these days, the depiction of realistic psychology for characters takes the focus, or talking about reasons to fight – those are situations outside of “fighting with robots”. Hino believes that the pure coolness of the robot becomes diluted because of that.

Famitsu points out how, in the past, things like pushing a button on the cockpit, or a robot flying out from the hangar to space, were drawn in a neat way. Hino feels that those things are very important. That’s why Level-5 also announced a toy modeled after Musashi’s cockpit – you would want to control it by pressing the actual buttons, right? There was the Xbox title in recent years Steel Batallion which was bundled with a special-use controller. Level-5 isn’t making it as big as that, but they want to make it connect properly with the game. Hino thinks it’d be good if you can intuitively control it, like “hit this lever when you want to use a technique”. Of course you can control with buttons as well, but Level-5 is considering to make it possible with this toy, too.